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Some publicity and other news

2Aug

Oh, hello front page.

Landing a spot on The Daily Universe’s front page (BYU’s paper), we got ourselves a little bit of publicity to get the week started. If you are around BYU, go pick one up just about anywhere around campus. Or, you can pretend to pick one up and get a free PDF of the paper, or just look and read it on-line.

Home page of The Daily Universe, http://newsnet.byu.edu/

In other news, decisions have been made and revamped for us.

I feel like the last three months have been a whirlwind of emotions, travel, and adventure. These last 36 hours have been no exception. Sitting in a cafe in Kazan, we were at a stopping point with no where to go, or, as Tree had put it, everywhere to go. The decided plan was for me to go to Ukraine, Tree to go to his Ufa. Train tickets could not be booked on-line for some reason and things were not settling right with my travels. I went to the bathroom, feeling extremely ill, when I realized that extreme pain I was feeling in my ribs all night and morning had turned into a terrible rash and swelling. Immediately I rethought my plans, found a cheap flight for Norway and bought the ticket. Two hours later I was on a train to Moscow, remembering all the signs of breast cancer taught in health class, and realizing I had all of them. After a sleepless night, I got into Moscow, did more research, and still had all the signs and a plane ticket to Norway in a matter of hours. After lining up doctors in Norway, I got on a bus to the airport, and a phone call saying that the credit card would not work and so my ticket was cancelled. Not exactly sure what to do about clearing my visa now, I found the nearest foreign doctors office and got into an appointment.

There are some diseases that have a prime time frame. If not caught within so many hours, they can be a million times worse than before. Diseases that had I gone to Ukraine straight away, could have gotten extremely bad. Had I waited another day until in Norway, could have still been worse. Shingles is one of them. Which I believe is what the doctor diagnosed me with. When I told her I honestly thought I had cancer her response was “Oh, yeah. I never thought about that, but they do look exactly alike. I could see where that came from.” A handful of shots later (all at once too, a skill I believe only Russian women hold) and some prescriptions, and I am ready to go. My only explanation is my young age of chicken pox (2 months old) and recent exposure to someone with them. Those two are a perfect combination for shingles. This is, assuming that shingles is what the doctor was trying to have translated to me.

So I am now ready to go. I even got my credit card company to clear a plane ticket for tomorrow. So, as long as everything goes as planned, that’s the update! No cancer, a plane ticket, and a short break to take care of some business in order to finish up the last two weeks with a bang.

Christine,
Scary but hopefully all is resolved and shingles are under control. Have you thought about a second opinion while in Norway just to.be sure of diagnosis and the meds and shots you were given?
Get as much rest as you can so you can heal.
Gail–Josh’s gramma from Delaware

Thank you, Gamma Gail! Yeah, I have been reconsidering it, since I am in a handful of pain still, but things are clearing up, so I have yet to decide if I should or not. I will look into it though, thank you! And in the meantime I’ll try resting–something I have never been too good at.